VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Buchanan Gallery presents Two Solo-Exhibitions by Marlene Matalon & Margaret Smithers-Crump. On View October 1 through November 20, 2009.

From Smithers-Crump, we are showing 18 early- and mid-career works in an exhibit entitled A Clear Choice...Without End. The media are mixed, but the common thread is an exploration of transcendent light.

Matalon's Faces exhibit features six large (approx. four feet square) works incorporating digital photography, woven paper, pastel and silver leaf.

Marlene Matalon writes:
Woven inkjet prints plus inkjet prints of my digital photographs of pomegranates, apples and graphite drawings that I've done. Mounted on sealed and painted gaterfoam.

This image is a mix of ancient Japanese imagery and contemporary photography. The weaving is made of Japanese scrolls. My photographs of pomegranates, apples and graphite drawings are very contemporary. Marlene Matalon

Margaret Smithers-Crump writes:
For the past eight years I have been experimenting with painting and drawing on clear acrylic. The material offers endless expressive possibilities and continually challenges my creative senses.

I began this endeavor because I was searching for a material which would accept the most delicate and varied of lines and yet unlike paper would not require glazing (glass or plexiglass) as a protective covering. Glazing compromises the sensory experience and is particularly “unkind” to art works that explore visual subtleties. I concluded that if I could create a “tooth” to plexiglass, it would accept and hold a broad variety of drawing and painting media and of course would not need to be protected. This result was achieved by applying various sanding techniques on the acrylic and additionally, I experimented with other forms of altering and creating new surfaces.

However, the best and most visually rewarding quality of working on the acrylic is in the very nature of it’s translucentness. Painting, drawing and collage can be done on the front and the back. Lines, light and color can be obscured or made crystal clear. When thicker plexiglass is used, the effects are magnified. There is a wonderful sense of movement. Forms and colors appear to shift back and forth. Lines move organically in and out and virtually disappear. Plexiglass is a near perfect medium for expressing the more fluid elements of nature: light, water and air. It is these three elements that form the thematic basis for the majority of my works. I love their kaleidoscopic relationship. Furthermore, their fluid nature seems to underscore and compliment the dimensional illusions intrinsic to plexiglass. As I compose, I try to capitalize on the notion of flux. Things frequently enter and exit on and off the picture plane. The void between two places is often emphasized and the transient, the ephemeral need not be without strength or relevance.

Light above all, is my single most important subject. I use it visually, metaphorically and as a abstract symbol. The fact that plexiglass transmits actual light as well as the painted illusion of light is something akin to epiphany.

Pictured:  Marlene Matalon, detail The King, 2009, Woven ink jet prints, A Leafed background & Pastel, 48" x 48."